


Time Waves

by TiffanyF



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 10:32:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2544308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiffanyF/pseuds/TiffanyF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor sat at his workstation down under the console carefully assembling a watch. “I don’t know if this is the right thing to do. In some lights it might well be considered to be cruel, even torture, if looked at from a different angle,” he said.  “Doing this to Clara, it might well be the end. She might never come back, and there are still things about her I do not understand. Who is the woman in the shop? How did Clara come to be the Impossible Girl? I need to understand these things.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Waves

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure where this came from, or where it's going. I just have a lot of feelings about how Clara is treating the Doctor this series.

The Doctor sat at his workstation down under the console carefully assembling a watch. “I don’t know if this is the right thing to do. In some lights it might well be considered to be cruel, even torture, if looked at from a different angle,” he said. “Doing this to Clara, it might well be the end. She might never come back, and there are still things about her I do not understand. Who is the woman in the shop? How did Clara come to be the Impossible Girl? I need to understand these things.”

“She obviously doesn’t trust me,” he continued, talking to himself. “Was she so blind to me last time, or was there something about a younger form that she was able to trust more easily? From the moment she saw me, she’s always looking at me like she doesn’t know who I am.”

“She doesn’t know who you are. She hasn’t given you a chance to show her who you are this time,” the Doctor said. “It’s obvious that Clara looks at you and still sees a stranger. Someone that she doesn’t trust because she’s in denial. You heard her when we were regenerating. She didn’t want us to go, even though we were trying to tell her what was happening. Then so many things were confused, are still confused, but getting better. Unless you can convince Clara that you are not lying to her about wishing to talk honestly, then she will never give us the chance we really need.”

He sighed and put the gold watch down on the table. “Honestly, I just want to know what has happened to her. When she started lying to me.” The Doctor rubbed his eyes and picked up the watch again. The watch he’d warn every day in his previous regeneration. “The young man she’s taken up with, he seems very nice. Respectable. He cares for her, I can see that in his eyes. I wonder if she lies to him as well. I don’t know that I believe he’s suddenly completely fine with her traveling on the TARDIS. Clara wanted to quit for different reasons than she told me. I know that. I know I had to have lied before. That’s rule one. Everyone knows that. Why is she just now objecting to it so?”

“Maybe it’s her new young man. She wants to be someone that he’ll like, someone that doesn’t accept lies. Accept death when it’s unavoidable,” the Doctor said. “Does Clara think that I don’t feel each and every death around me? Does she really think that I don’t notice every single person around me that suffers and dies? Oh, of course she doesn’t remember meeting me back when the snowmen were attempting to take over the world. When I was in hiding because I was tired of so much death. When I lost Amy and Rory. I would rather save everyone, but that’s not always possible, and it breaks my hearts.”

“Which brings me back to this option.” The Doctor stared at the watch, as if it would have the answers he needed. “I’m already losing her. Maybe I can at least have some answers to bring peace to my hearts again.”  
*~*

Clara was expecting to find the TARDIS in her apartment when she got home from work, and then had to convince herself that she wasn’t disappointed when it wasn’t there. It’d been a couple of long weeks since the last time she saw the Doctor, and she worried that something might have happened to him. He hadn’t been the same since regeneration, and it seemed like he spent more time poking at things now than he had before.

She changed into an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt before heading to the kitchen to start on a late supper for herself. They’d had parent meetings at the school, and they’d run long enough that she was just going to eat something and head to bed. Maybe it was better that the Doctor wasn’t around. Clara was too sleepy to head out on any sort of an adventure, and it would mean she didn’t have to lie to Danny about how she spent the night when they met for their morning run.

Life had become so complicated since he’d come to the school to teach, and Clara realized how she felt about him. How he felt about her. Trying to keep the Doctor a secret was exhausting, especially when he was so demanding about spending time with her. It’d been manageable when she was just having to worry about work, but suddenly having someone that she really wanted to spend time with after work and on the weekends; to have a real life, that meant that she suddenly had to divide her time with the Doctor with someone else, and she didn’t know how she would be able to keep doing it.

Especially after he up and left her on the moon with a bomb and no way out. He’d claimed that he was just outside. Close to hand, but Clara didn’t believe him. He’d just up and left her to die. At one point Clara believed that the Doctor would always be there, at her back, supporting her no matter what, but that belief died when she had to watch him turn around, walk into the TARDIS, and vanish away from her. Danny wouldn’t have left. He would have stayed right there with her the whole time, died with her if that’s what their fate was, but he wouldn’t have left her.

Clara jumped slightly when her cell phone beeped. Thinking it was a text message from Danny, she picked it up and frowned when all she saw was an address. Nothing else, just an address. The last time that happened was when her Doctor wanted to meet her. But he was gone. Never to return, no matter what. Clara had looked it up one night in the TARDIS. There were walls that prevented the various incarnations of the Doctor from existing in the same dimension at the same time. The three of them together to save the Earth and the universe was an anomaly, brought on by something more powerful than time itself, and couldn’t happen again.

Still, Clara couldn’t help the slight flutter of hope in her heart. She left her dinner cooling on the counter and headed out into the darkening night, down to her bike. She had to know if this was a new thing with the Doctor, or if a miracle had happened.  
*~*

The TARDIS was parked in a park under some trees, well away from the lights. Clara parked next to her and went up to the door slowly. “Well, who am I going to find inside?” she asked, laying her hand on the door.

The ship didn’t answer, but the door opened under her hand and she pushed it open ahead of her. Clara stopped just inside the door, looking around in shock. It was the control room she saw for the first time. Her control room. Not the redecorated one she’d been spending so much time in lately.

“Hello, Clara,” a familiar voice said from the other side of the console. “Sorry I’m late, I got a bit tied up.”

“Doctor?” Clara asked, voice choking on the tears she felt pooling in her eyes.

Her best friend, the young man in the purple coat and bow-tie stepped around the console. “There you are, my Impossible Girl,” he said, opening his arms. “I’m sorry it took me so long, Clara, but time has not been my friend lately.”

“Oh, Doctor.” Clara ran across the room and flung herself into the familiar arms, feeling them close around her. “Where the hell have you been?”

“What do you mean, Clara?”

“After Trenzelore, after the battle there, you changed,” Clara said, letting her tears fall. “You went different, older. Bitter. Colder. You weren’t you anymore and no matter how I looked, you weren’t anywhere in there, and I didn’t know what to do. I’ve been so sad and so scared without you that I’ve felt I’m living a nightmare and don’t know what to do.”

“My poor girl,” the Doctor said. “There, there Clara, it’ll be all right. You’ll see. Come on, let’s have a seat and some tea.” He untangled the young human and led her over to the stairs and down towards the kitchen. “Come on, you can tell me all about it and I’ll help you figure out what’s happened. Sounds to me like someone has been playing about with time, and that shouldn’t have happened. No, it shouldn’t have happened at all, and I want to know who’s doing it.”

“You told me there was a gap between our universe and the one Gallifrey went to,” Clara said, wiping her eyes with the handkerchief the Doctor passed over. He always seemed to have a supply of them around, even if she’d never worked out where they were. “When you went upstairs to die, I begged them, Doctor. I begged for more life for you. More energy so you wouldn’t die. Something to help you so I wouldn’t lose you, and then I did anyway. You changed and I didn’t know what to do.”

The Doctor nodded. “Clara, how much do you remember about the events around the events of the Zygons attempting to take over the planet and there being several other versions of me around?” he asked. “Sit, sit, and let me make you some tea. Have you eaten?”

“No, nothing since lunch. I was cooking myself some supper when you texted me and I left to see what was happening,” Clara said.

“I should still have something in here we can eat. I don’t want you getting ill,” the Doctor said. “Clara, the Time Lords would have sent through regeneration energy. It’s the only type of life energy we have on Gallifrey. It would have been enough to make me younger and stronger, but it would have changed me, yes. You’ve been traveling with me since then?”

Clara took the mug of tea and wrapped her hands around it tightly. “Yes, with the changed you, the older man you became,” she said. “He, you, he’s so different, Doctor. He’s cold, short, abrupt. He doesn’t care about people the same way you do. He doesn’t seem to like me, and he hates my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend? Where did you get one of those?” the Doctor asked, head popping up over a counter.

She couldn’t help it. She started laughing. Until the moment she saw him in the console room, Clara hadn’t realized how much she really missed her Doctor. “He’s a fellow teacher at school, named Danny,” she said. “He was a soldier, and you, well, the new Doctor, really seems to have something against soldiers.”

“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you see things that stay with you, I’m afraid,” the Doctor said. “I’ve seen war. I’ve seen death. So many of both that I’m weary from them, Clara.” He put a plate of what looked like carrots and bread on the table and sat down across from her. “There is too much death in the universe. We need more life. We need to save as many as we can, and soldiers aren’t always good at doing that. I’ve known some grand ones in my time. You’ve met Kate. Her father now, he was a soldier that was willing to listen and learn, a rare enough thing. There are rare ones like that, but for the most part, soldiers are blind and follow orders without thinking. That’s where I object to them, blind obedience. It’s never a good thing.”

“Danny thinks,” Clara said. “Too much, sometimes. He worked out there was something unusual about me.”

“He realized you’re the Impossible Girl? He is a clever one.”

“No, silly, I mean that I would come back from a trip with you and go to see him, and he would notice that I was out of breath, or wearing different clothes, or something like that,” Clara said. She picked up one of the carrots, knowing from experience that it would be soft and filling. “He regrets some of the things he did while he was in the war zone, but he’s working now to make up for it. Too hard, sometimes, but he tries.”

“A good man then. The world needs more good men,” the Doctor said with a grin. “It sounds to me like you’re happy, Clara Oswald. Why the tears when you saw me?”

“Because you’re my best friend and you vanished without giving me a chance to say goodbye, or any warning,” Clara said. “You were suddenly gone and there was a stranger looking back at me babbling about how his kidneys weren’t the right color. I’ve felt like I’ve been in a nightmare since that happened, Doctor, and seeing you here, today, made everything seem right again.”

The Doctor smiled. “There is always something. I remember when I regenerated into me, I was worried about my chin,” he said. “Then I thought I was a girl for a moment, because of the hair, but then I realized I was crashing and had to deal with that crisis. I’m never my best when that happens, but this one sounds different. No gold light shooting out of my body?”

“No, nothing like that. Just one second you and one second stranger,” Clara said. “It’s almost like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, Doctor. I’m scared that he’s lost his moral compass.”

“He sounds more like an older version of me, one that you would only vaguely recall,” the Doctor said. “You’ve met four of me now, it sounds like, Clara, and you have a favorite.”

“Of course I do. It’s you, silly,” Clara said. “You’re my best friend, and I know that you’re always there for me. The new Doctor, I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s like I don’t know what he’s going to do. It scares me, Doctor. You want to keep everyone safe. I’ve seen you take on impossible odds to save everyone, maybe even at the risk of your own life. Lately, it’s like I said. It’s like I’m traveling with a stranger. I don’t know who he is.”

“I remember when I met you for the first time, Clara. It was as a young woman named Oswin, and she was so full of pep. So full of life that I would have done anything to save her,” the Doctor said. “But she’d been converted into a dalek. She was insane, though she created a fiction to help her survive. Oswin. Soufflé girl. She gave her life to save me and my companions at the time, and I didn’t think of her again until I met a young barmaid named Clara that wouldn’t leave me alone to grieve. She pushed and pushed and died as a result. I couldn’t save her either. Her dying words to me were the same as Oswin’s and I realized they were the same woman. Impossible as it was, they were the same person. Divided across time, somehow, and I didn’t understand. I went into hiding, meditation, to think about what this could possibly mean. Then, one day, the phone on the TARDIS rang. It was a young woman looking to find the Internet.”

“Me?” Clara asked.

“I never did tell you the full story. Even after figuring out how it was that you were all through time and space, Clara, I wasn’t sure what it all meant,” the Doctor said. “There’s more than one reason I call you my Impossible Girl, you know.”

“I thought we worked it all out,” Clara said. “There’s more to it than what we’ve talked about? Why didn’t you ever say?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Because I’m still looking for answers and information on it,” he said. “There are things I want to know because I don’t like not knowing things. You said you don’t know what this new Doctor will do. Has he hurt you in some way? I would never be able to forgive myself if he hurt you. I never did forgive myself for Adric, and I wouldn’t forgive myself for you.”

“Adric?”

“A story for another time,” the Doctor said. “One of my companions. An extremely bright young man that died. It is rare, Clara, but sometimes I cannot save my companions, no matter how much I may want to, and they die. It breaks my hearts when I lose them because my companions are my family. I may be the last of the Time Lords, but when I have my companions with me, I don’t feel alone. Is that selfish of me?”

She reached across and put her hand on top of his. “No, of course it’s not, silly,” Clara said. “Why didn’t you say something about this before?”

“It never came up, and you said you wanted to travel with me when you wanted, not full time. I’ve never pushed anyone to give me more of their time than they wanted,” the Doctor said. “Would I rather have a full time companion? Of course I would, because then the TARDIS wouldn’t be as dark. Time wouldn’t be as heavy. I learned a few lessons with Amy and Rory. My beloved Amy and Rory. They were taken from me, even after I did everything in my power to save them. I tried to retire from everything then. From the universe. Until a young barmaid came to call.”

“Doctor, how much pain do you carry?”

“I’m old, Clara. I know you look at me and you see this face, and I think you forget that I’m over a thousand years old,” the Doctor said. “I’ve loved so many people, met so many people, lost so many people that the level of pain I carry would likely kill a human should they experience even a portion of it. You never did answer my question, you know. Has the new Doctor hurt you?”

“You’re not getting out of this that easily, Doctor,” Clara said. “He hasn’t harmed me physically. Yet, anyway. I never know what he’s going to do, to me, or to people around us. We took one of my students on a small trip to the Moon as a reward for helping stop an alien invasion and it turned out the day we landed there was a ship that just came from Earth to blow up the Moon because it was disintegrating and pulling the Earth apart. The Doctor, the new one, worked out that the Moon is actually an egg, but couldn’t tell us what was going to hatch out. When the woman pushed to destroy the Earth, he said that he had no part in telling us what to do, that it was our planet and our future, and left. He just climbed right into his TARDIS and left me there with one of my students. A young girl that was terrified and completely out of her element.”

“Clara, I don’t know this new Doctor, but I do know that much wouldn’t have changed between regenerations,” the Doctor said. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t have pulled you to the side and told you he would be close, but I would never leave you in a situation like that. I couldn’t. Not just because it’s you, my Impossible Girl, but because I have never abandoned a companion. Well, not off their home planet. I’ll admit my driving isn’t always that great.”

“That hasn’t changed,” Clara said. “When it was all over and finished. When we had my student home, he told me that because of that day, she was going to be one of the greatest heroes in history, and that he was right outside the whole time. But he just up and left me, after an argument. I really thought he’d gone.”

The Doctor sighed and then scooted around so he could hug Clara again. “It sounds to me like you’ve had a hard go of it, Clara Oswald,” he said.

“I’ve done my best to keep going, but I told him I was going to quit traveling,” Clara said. “Then there was a train trip and he said something that got me thinking, and I’m still traveling because I can’t give it up. I love being able to go out and see things that no one else can, and I don’t know why I can’t give that up, when part of me has started longing for life on Earth with Danny. For a future I don’t think I can be happy with.”

“It scares you,” the Doctor said.

“Yeah. How do you know me so well, Doctor?”

“Oh, I’m a keen observer of human nature, Clara,” he said with a smile. “I know you, and I know how you think. Best friends, remember? That means we know each other better than anyone else, right?”

She managed a smile. “Yeah, although boyfriend means that Danny knows me in some ways better than you do, Doctor,” Clara said.

“That is for the pair of you to work out. I don’t ask, though I should have once, with Amy and Rory, but it brought me River, so I can’t complain too much. I don’t dare. She would come back from the dead and hit me,” the Doctor said. “Clara, I don’t have much more time here with you, as much as I want to stay. I miss you, too, my Impossible Girl, but the time waves are against me.”

“What do you mean?” Clara asked.

“I’m not supposed to be here, but I came because you needed someone to talk to, someone that you could talk honestly to,” the Doctor replied. “A friend that knows you well enough to know what you’re not saying as well as what you’re trying not to say. I’m always going to be in your heart, Clara Oswald, even if I’m not with you every day.”

“This just isn’t fair. Why do you have to go, Doctor? Why can’t I come along with you?”

“If you were to come with me, you would lose Danny,” the Doctor said. “You love him too much to do that to him, Clara. He knows loss. Don’t make him feel it again. Not when he’s trying to recover from the darkness he’s seen.”

“Then what do I do, Doctor?” Clara asked. “What do I do?”

“I wish I had an answer for you, Clara, but the only thing I can tell you is this; regeneration changes me, yes, but my core is the same,” the Doctor said. “My hearts are the same, and my beliefs are the same. My exterior is different, and the ways I hide myself are different, but at the core, I’m the same. Can you look for that spark within the new Doctor and then ask him about it?”

“I don’t know,” Clara said.

“Well then, you do what’s best for you, Clara Oswald. I know that you have a strong spirit along with a loving heart, and that’s a powerful combination,” the Doctor said. “I would stay with you if I could, but I can’t. Remember that I need you, no matter what my face looks like, because you are my best friend.”

“I don’t want to tell you good-bye, Doctor,” Clara said, clinging to him. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

He pulled her into a tight hug. “You won’t, because I’m still with you,” the Doctor said. “Not with this face. Not as me, but you still have a Doctor in your life. It’s not good-bye, Clara. Never good-bye. Listen for me when you least expect to hear me, and I’ll be there for you. Come on, you need to get home and get some sleep. I think you haven’t been sleeping well, my girl, and that’s not good.”

“Can I sleep here tonight, Doctor?” Clara asked. “Danny, he, well, he doesn’t like me spending time on the TARDIS and I haven’t been here nearly as much as I probably should be, but I don’t know what to do.”

“We would love to have you stay, but it’s too risky,” the Doctor said. “There’s no way for me to know when I’ll be ripped out of here and put back into the place I belong. No, Clara, it’s home for you, and sweet dreams. Follow your heart and you’ll never be led wrong.”  
*~*

The Doctor dropped Clara off at her apartment and then shut the door behind her, locking it before slumping back against it. “Go ahead,” he said to the TARDIS. The control room shimmered as the desktop changed back to what it had been earlier that day. The Doctor pushed a button on the watch and the young face faded away, revealing the older Doctor. “Not a good idea at all, but at least now I have a few more answers. The question now is, what do I do now that I know them?”

“Are you going to wait for her to talk to you?” he asked himself as he pushed up and headed towards the wardrobe to change back into his new clothes. “Or are you just going to keep on as you have been and possibly lose her?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I’ll see what happens the next time I go to pick her up for an adventure, and play it by ear from there,” he said. “Until she finds the core of me again, there won’t be any trust, and nothing I can do at this point will help her to find trust in me. I wonder why she didn’t mention how she’s been treating me. Why wouldn’t she mention that?”

“Because she’s ashamed of it,” he replied. “She doesn’t want any other version of me to know how she’s treating me. That’s an easy answer. At least we have a vague idea of why she’s acting like she is towards us. Rory was at least willing to give me a chance, even if we did get off on the wrong foot. Twice. Having him along was one of the better choices I ever made. I wonder why Mr. Pink hasn’t tried to come traveling with Clara. He seems to want to protect her from everything , including me. I wonder if he truly sees the strong woman next to him.”

He sighed. “I think my problems are only just beginning with this pair,” the Doctor said. “Times like this, I really miss Amy and Rory. Wish I’d been able to tell them how much.”


End file.
